Love that image of Gene Upshaw they used. Looks like he's playing with taped lobster claws

fwiw I don't compare QB's across eras. The position is so radically different that it's just not worth it. Maybe Peyton is the best of all time, or maybe it's Brady or perhaps Marino. And while championships help...I mean if you put Brees on New England and pair him with Belichick is it so unfathomable that he wins the same as Brady. Would it be any different with Rodgers subbed in for Brady? If Brady played for a franchise like N.O. who for a lot of years had a sieve defense would he drag them to 6 Super Bowl titles? Doubtful. He may end up just like Brees has. A great QB with a respectable but not quite good enough infrastructure around him.

And forget about comparing Unitas to anybody today. Heck nobody who called their own plays, got hit, and went against actual defense should be compared to todays video game stats era.

sheajets wrote:Love that image of Gene Upshaw they used. Looks like he's playing with taped lobster claws

fwiw I don't compare QB's across eras. The position is so radically different that it's just not worth it. Maybe Peyton is the best of all time, or maybe it's Brady or perhaps Marino. And while championships help...I mean if you put Brees on New England and pair him with Belichick is it so unfathomable that he wins the same as Brady. Would it be any different with Rodgers subbed in for Brady? If Brady played for a franchise like N.O. who for a lot of years had a sieve defense would he drag them to 6 Super Bowl titles? Doubtful. He may end up just like Brees has. A great QB with a respectable but not quite good enough infrastructure around him.

And forget about comparing Unitas to anybody today. Heck nobody who called their own plays, got hit, and went against actual defense should be compared to todays video game stats era.

To a degree I feel the same way. Had Ken Anderson or Archie Manning or Joe Theismann or Jim Plunkett wound up as a rookie in Pittsburgh instead of Terry Bradshaw, with a cast that included Joe Greene, Franco Harris, Mel Blount, Chuck Noll et al, I think any of them could have led the Steelers to four Super Bowl wins in the 1970's. I'm not diminishing Bradshaw's accomplishments, but sometimes time and place do make a difference. Maybe part of the reason Bradshaw is considered so great is because he had Swann and Stallworth to throw to. Ultimately, a quarterback is only as good as his receivers.

Along the same lines, how much differently would Marino and Elway's careers have played out if Marino had been the number one draft pick and wound up in Denver, and Elway wound up with the Dolphins? Probably about the same, just change the names. Marino probably would have won two Super Bowls in Denver and Elway would have won none in Miami because of the systems they were in and the supporting casts around them.

"Every time you lose, you die a little bit. You die inside. Not all your organs, maybe just your liver." - George Allen